Postscript(81)

‘You don’t.’ I grab another tissue and dry her face.

She straightens her turban, smooths down the bed blankets and slowly, painfully adjusts her position. She reaches to the drawer in the locker beside her and retrieves an envelope. I recognise it as the one she and Jewel chose on the day I set up the stationery in Joy’s home. My eyes fill again, I cannot control my emotions. She hands it to me and our eyes lock.

‘Now you have to go. Go, leave, goodbye,’ she says, shooing me away.

‘Good luck,’ I whisper.

I have to remember, for every goodbye, there’s been a hello. And there’s nothing more wonderful than a hello from one person to another. The sound of Gerry’s voice each time he picked up the phone. When he opened his eyes in the morning. When I came home from work. When he watched me walking to meet him and made me feel like I was everything. So many beautiful hellos, only one real goodbye.

Ginika is busy today, fixing what she can, preparing the world for the gap she will leave, preparing for the biggest goodbye to the most important person in the world to her.

Jewel’s foster mother has arrived with Jewel, and Ginika has asked for Denise and Tom to attend. They wait outside the room with their solicitor. Ginika has a will to write, with Jewel’s guardians to add. The rules usually only allow two visitors at a time but for Ginika, in these circumstances, they allow for all necessary parties to be present. For their privacy, I step out of the room as soon as they all arrive, but I do procrastinate. I stay to watch as Ginika uses every bit of the dying energy from her body to take Jewel from Betty’s arms, and place her in Tom’s arms. A great hello.

If only Gerry knew what he’d started.

Of course I’ll never know what Gerry was thinking when he wrote his ten letters for me, but I am learning one thing. It wasn’t all for me as I’d believed at the time, it was his own way of trying to continue his life when life had exhausted all avenues, and death was moving closer to catch his fall. It was his way of saying not just to me but to the world, remember me. Because ultimately, it’s all anyone wants. Not to get lost, or left behind, not to be forgotten, to always be a part of the moments they know they’ll miss. To leave their stamp. To be remembered.





34


‘You’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette,’ I say aloud, surveying the disaster site that is my bedroom as I try to pack up for my move.

‘Eggs give me the squirts,’ Ciara shouts from further away than I thought. She’s in the spare bedroom next door.

‘Ciara!’ I warn.

She appears at my bedroom door, wearing a peculiar collection of clothes that I just bagged for the shop. All at once, together, mismatched.

‘You’re supposed to be helping me fill the bags, not empty them for dress-up.’

‘But if I did that, I wouldn’t look like this.’ She poses provocatively against the doorframe. ‘I think I’ll wear this outfit on Friday night.’

‘Which one?’ I ask. ‘You’re wearing about three.’

Putting ten years of clutter into refuse bags, or boxing them to create further clutter in my new home, is taking longer than expected as each letter, receipt and bottom of every pocket of every pair of jeans or coat tells a story and draws me into a memory. I’m used to doing this with great efficiency at work, and yet because it’s personal, every single item is a wormhole and sucks me into another time of my life. Despite feeling suspended in time, one hour becomes two, daylight becomes night. I’m more ruthless with clothes, shoes, handbags and books that don’t hold any sentimental value. Anything I haven’t worn in the past year and can’t believe I ever bought in the first place goes straight into charity bags.

It’s stressful at first. Everything scattered in piles around me, I’m making more of a mess than I had in the first place, every item is being pulled out of its hiding place, its unnecessariness revealed.

Triage, Ciara had called it.

‘I don’t know how anything actually makes it to the shelves of your shop.’

‘That’s why it’s your job to empty the bags and boxes. I have a habit of wanting the things that people don’t want,’ she says cheekily, ‘which Mathew says is a curse but I know it’s a gift, because that’s exactly how I married him and I told him so.’

I laugh. I sit on the floor, back against the wall. Time for a break.

‘I’m so glad you’re doing this,’ she says, relaxing on the floor, legs out, pop socks over a pair of tights. She puts a pair of strappy sandals over the socks and tights. ‘I’m proud of you. We all are.’

‘Everybody must have very low expectations of me if selling a house induces pride.’

‘It’s more than that and you know it.’

I do know it. ‘What if I told you it was less about an emotional willingness to mature and more about the fact my kitchen needs an overhaul, the windows need to be replaced, there’s something wrong with the heating and the floors are lifting in the dining room so I hid it with a rug so house viewers wouldn’t notice.’

‘I’d say I’m proud of you for not going down with the ship.’ She smiles, and she tries to hold it but it wobbles. ‘I’ve been so scared for you over the past few months.’

‘I’m OK.’